Day: March 27, 2018

In the kitchen where I work, we listen to Pandora on the radio for our musical pleasure. It offers a wide variety of genres and we can normally find a common ground between all of those that work in the kitchen and their listening preferences. But since we are too cheap to pay for premium Pandora, we must endure a few advertisements during the day. One the ads caught my attention recently. It was an ad for the Ohio Lottery.

The advertisement started by saying how everyone should start playing instant tickets and was suggesting how easy it was to win hundreds if not thousands of dollars if you do. I’m okay with this so far. I have played instant tickets before.

As a matter of fact, a former co-worker and I used to play multiple tickets every week while we worked together. And for the record, we did normally break even while playing. So as you can see, I am not opposed to playing the lottery. I will even play when the mega millions and those type of lotteries get up into the millions of dollars. And for the record, I am not breaking even on this front.

Anyway, the ad that caught my attention did go on to say that we could all win and now it is even easier to play instant tickets because you can now purchase game tickets, that could win you hundreds if not thousands of dollars, by using your credit or debit card. The lottery made easy. The advertisement then ends by saying please gamble responsibly.

I am going to let this sink in for a moment.

So be sure to gamble responsibly. Use your credit card to buy lottery tickets. That is the way to go. Put yourself in more debt to gamble so you might win hundreds or maybe even thousands of dollars.

“Honey! Let’s retire and play the lottery! We can put it on the credit card and not have to pay for it for at least a month…or more if we want to pay interest on it, but it is responsible gambling! We could win hundreds or even thousands!”

Am I the only one seeing the irony of this logic?

I’m not a big gambler. Will I gamble? Yes. Do I feel the need to visit the local casino? Nope, not really. Will I gamble if I have to use my credit card? Probably not. I get that carrying cash is not that popular anymore. Everyone uses a credit card for just about everything. It is a convenience thing, I get that. Call me old school, or just old, but to encourage debt in order to play the lottery just might not be responsible gambling.